Monday, September 2, 2013

Politician, thy name is sham!

A great example of why George Mason University economist Don Boudreaux is an OLS hero -- thus, a real hero -- can be seen in his most recent article at Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. His topic is the political class and their belief in their own heroic-ness, if you will. Well, Boudreaux won't:

A genuinely heroic politician, for example,
would seldom vote for deficit spending. He or she would understand that
doing so is typically a cowardly maneuver to win votes today with
government handouts while passing on to future generations the bill for
these handouts.

Of course, economically uninformed pundits
and the special-interest groups who benefit from today's debt-financed
handouts often praise politicians who vote for these handouts as being
“heroic” or “courageous.” Such praise makes as much sense as would, say,
praise of actor Christian Bale for being “heroic” in his film exploits
as Batman. It's fake heroism. It's not real. It's theater aimed at
fooling a large audience into thinking someone is doing something that
he or she really isn't doing.